My rants about our OLB track record spurred a quick project idea: looking at the most standout players Shaw and his staff have recruited and coached up and seeing if we can assess any patterns when it comes to how often standouts are produced in relation to how well we've recruited respective positions.
To baseline this analysis, I want to define a universe of Shaw staff recruit/protege superstar players. I think the cleanest way to do this is to look at the players who made first or second team all-conference as offensive or defensive players (i.e., excluding special teams) and never played for a staff with Harbaugh as the head coach, to try to make the focus as much as possible on players the Shaw staff developed rather than those for whom the Harbaugh staff may have deserved more credit.
This approach leaves us with the following breakdown of superstar players:
QB (2): Kevin Hogan, KJ Costello
RB (2): Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love
WR (3): Ty Montgomery, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Simi Fehoko
TE (4): Austin Hooper, Dalton Schultz, Kaden Smith, Colby Parkinson
OL (7): Andrus Peat, Joshua Garnett, Kyle Murphy, Nate Herbig, David Bright, Walker Little, Drew Dalman
DL (4): Aziz Shittu, Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, Thomas Booker
LB (2): Blake Martinez, Casey Toohill
DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
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On a per capita basis, TE really jumps out on the high end and LB really jumps out at the low end. Otherwise superstars seem to be spread around pretty evenly per capita.
The other thing I wanted to comment on before getting to the original goal of this post, to assess the above in light of recruiting, is how this makes our current assistant coaches look. To wit:
* Turner coached all four of these superstars and was the only position coach any of them ever knew. Talent tells a big part of the story, but that's a resume one can sell.
* Akina coached all six of these superstars and for four of them were the only Stanford coach they knew (and a fifth trained his last two years under Akina).
* Kennedy coached two of them, although one was Kennedy's first year. He's only been on staff for four seasons so that's a good track record.
* For all the shade I/others throw at Reynolds (I think deservedly), he's actually had three superstars in six years. That's not bad. Some context though: one came in his first year, one came in his second year, and mileage may vary on whether the third was actually a superstar at Stanford but I'm including him because of my methodological rigor. This adds up to a picture in which it's easy to give previous DL/strength coaches the lion's share of the credit for the superstar track record.
* Pritchard has been the primary position coach for two superstars among the six QB1s he's coached.
[For what it's worth, I didn't cover special teamers above because I don't think they're really the point of this exercise, but Bailey and Toner have made all-conference.]
* Heffernan has only been on the staff for one season so not very fair/interesting to comment on here.
* Sanders has only been on the staff for two seasons so still a bit premature to evaluate him, but he's on the clock.
* Gould technically has one but it was his first year as a coach. He's had none in the four years since.
* Anderson has a lone superstar (and I personally thought Toohill as all-conference was extremely generous). Anderson padded the resume considerably in the early years with Trent Murphy and Chase Thomas, who were both first team all-conference twice. The guys he has been responsible for developing since then have been a decidedly less impressive.
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In assessing how impressive two superstar QBs, four superstar TEs, four superstar DL, etc. is, I think it would be useful to look at how effectively the 2011-2018 classes recruited each position. [2018 makes sense as the cutoff to me as the story is still to be written on how many superstars there are in the 2019 and beyond classes, but it bears mentioning that this approach compares peaches to nectarines a bit as Kyu Blu Kelly is a superstar from a class not included in this sample, but I think that's a minor knock to the rigor here] Here are top 100, top 200, and top 400 recruits for each position group in that span with the parentheses repeating for ease of reading the above findings on numbers of superstars:
QB (2): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 6 top 400
RB (2): 2 top 100, 4 top 200, 8 top 400
WR (3): 1 top 100, 4 top 200, 7 top 400
TE (4): 3 top 100, 3 top 200, 5 top 400
OL (7): 6 top 100, 8 top 200, 13 top 400
DL (4): 2 top 100, 2 top 200, 9 top 400
LB (2): 3 top 100, 5 top 200, 8 top 400
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
I'd be curious what others make of any of the information in this post. To my eyes, it suggests that when it comes to translating recruiting inputs into superstar talent the Shaw era has been most successful at TE, DL, and DB, and least successful at LB, RB, and QB. The TE and DB successes are owned by those position coaches and seem pretty notable. I believe that the DL success has a lot to do with Randy Hart and Shannon Turley, both now gone, as well as getting one of the true mutants in Stanford history in Solomon Thomas. On the less pleasant side of the ledger, OLB, RB, and to a lesser extent QB coaching don't come out looking so good in this analysis. As both the defensive coordinator and the position coach Anderson pretty clearly owns his failures. Pritchard, on the other hand, as we've discussed for years, is extremely hard if not impossible to evaluate because there's no way to know how his scheme/playcalling/QB instruction would look divorced from Shaw's influence. Perhaps the most significant insight from this analysis IMHO is how poorly RB coaching looks. That hasn't been all Gould but, when you couple this with the observation that he hasn't had an all-conference back in the last four years despite having numerous top 400 backs in his room, it doesn't look good for him. I have no opinion on whether this is a deterioration in coaching ability/effectiveness compared to his incredible run at Cal back in the day or a reversion to the mean, just observing that his effectiveness as Stanford's RB coach has been poor.
To baseline this analysis, I want to define a universe of Shaw staff recruit/protege superstar players. I think the cleanest way to do this is to look at the players who made first or second team all-conference as offensive or defensive players (i.e., excluding special teams) and never played for a staff with Harbaugh as the head coach, to try to make the focus as much as possible on players the Shaw staff developed rather than those for whom the Harbaugh staff may have deserved more credit.
This approach leaves us with the following breakdown of superstar players:
QB (2): Kevin Hogan, KJ Costello
RB (2): Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love
WR (3): Ty Montgomery, JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Simi Fehoko
TE (4): Austin Hooper, Dalton Schultz, Kaden Smith, Colby Parkinson
OL (7): Andrus Peat, Joshua Garnett, Kyle Murphy, Nate Herbig, David Bright, Walker Little, Drew Dalman
DL (4): Aziz Shittu, Solomon Thomas, Harrison Phillips, Thomas Booker
LB (2): Blake Martinez, Casey Toohill
DB (6): Jordan Richards, Ronnie Harris, Justin Reid, Quenton Meeks, Paulson Adebo, Kyu Blu Kelly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a per capita basis, TE really jumps out on the high end and LB really jumps out at the low end. Otherwise superstars seem to be spread around pretty evenly per capita.
The other thing I wanted to comment on before getting to the original goal of this post, to assess the above in light of recruiting, is how this makes our current assistant coaches look. To wit:
* Turner coached all four of these superstars and was the only position coach any of them ever knew. Talent tells a big part of the story, but that's a resume one can sell.
* Akina coached all six of these superstars and for four of them were the only Stanford coach they knew (and a fifth trained his last two years under Akina).
* Kennedy coached two of them, although one was Kennedy's first year. He's only been on staff for four seasons so that's a good track record.
* For all the shade I/others throw at Reynolds (I think deservedly), he's actually had three superstars in six years. That's not bad. Some context though: one came in his first year, one came in his second year, and mileage may vary on whether the third was actually a superstar at Stanford but I'm including him because of my methodological rigor. This adds up to a picture in which it's easy to give previous DL/strength coaches the lion's share of the credit for the superstar track record.
* Pritchard has been the primary position coach for two superstars among the six QB1s he's coached.
[For what it's worth, I didn't cover special teamers above because I don't think they're really the point of this exercise, but Bailey and Toner have made all-conference.]
* Heffernan has only been on the staff for one season so not very fair/interesting to comment on here.
* Sanders has only been on the staff for two seasons so still a bit premature to evaluate him, but he's on the clock.
* Gould technically has one but it was his first year as a coach. He's had none in the four years since.
* Anderson has a lone superstar (and I personally thought Toohill as all-conference was extremely generous). Anderson padded the resume considerably in the early years with Trent Murphy and Chase Thomas, who were both first team all-conference twice. The guys he has been responsible for developing since then have been a decidedly less impressive.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In assessing how impressive two superstar QBs, four superstar TEs, four superstar DL, etc. is, I think it would be useful to look at how effectively the 2011-2018 classes recruited each position. [2018 makes sense as the cutoff to me as the story is still to be written on how many superstars there are in the 2019 and beyond classes, but it bears mentioning that this approach compares peaches to nectarines a bit as Kyu Blu Kelly is a superstar from a class not included in this sample, but I think that's a minor knock to the rigor here] Here are top 100, top 200, and top 400 recruits for each position group in that span with the parentheses repeating for ease of reading the above findings on numbers of superstars:
QB (2): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 6 top 400
RB (2): 2 top 100, 4 top 200, 8 top 400
WR (3): 1 top 100, 4 top 200, 7 top 400
TE (4): 3 top 100, 3 top 200, 5 top 400
OL (7): 6 top 100, 8 top 200, 13 top 400
DL (4): 2 top 100, 2 top 200, 9 top 400
LB (2): 3 top 100, 5 top 200, 8 top 400
DB (6): 3 top 100, 4 top 200, 12 top 400
I'd be curious what others make of any of the information in this post. To my eyes, it suggests that when it comes to translating recruiting inputs into superstar talent the Shaw era has been most successful at TE, DL, and DB, and least successful at LB, RB, and QB. The TE and DB successes are owned by those position coaches and seem pretty notable. I believe that the DL success has a lot to do with Randy Hart and Shannon Turley, both now gone, as well as getting one of the true mutants in Stanford history in Solomon Thomas. On the less pleasant side of the ledger, OLB, RB, and to a lesser extent QB coaching don't come out looking so good in this analysis. As both the defensive coordinator and the position coach Anderson pretty clearly owns his failures. Pritchard, on the other hand, as we've discussed for years, is extremely hard if not impossible to evaluate because there's no way to know how his scheme/playcalling/QB instruction would look divorced from Shaw's influence. Perhaps the most significant insight from this analysis IMHO is how poorly RB coaching looks. That hasn't been all Gould but, when you couple this with the observation that he hasn't had an all-conference back in the last four years despite having numerous top 400 backs in his room, it doesn't look good for him. I have no opinion on whether this is a deterioration in coaching ability/effectiveness compared to his incredible run at Cal back in the day or a reversion to the mean, just observing that his effectiveness as Stanford's RB coach has been poor.
